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“Peace”: Lévinas's Ethics, Memory, and Black History in Lawrence

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“Peace”: Lévinas's Ethics, Memory, and Black History in Lawrence Possibilities of “Peace”: Lévinas’s Ethics, Memory, and Black History in Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes by Ruth Emode B.A., Queen’s University, 2009 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English Ruth Emode, 2013 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Possibilities of “Peace”: Lévinas’s Ethics, Memory, and Black History in Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes by Ruth Emode B.A., Queen’s University, 2009 Supervisory Committee Dr. Lincoln Shlensky, Department of English Supervisor Dr. Nicole Shukin, Department of English Departmental Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Lincoln Shlensky, Department of English Supervisor Dr. Nicole Shukin, Department of English Departmental Member This thesis interrogates how Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes represents histories of violence ethically by utilizing Emmanuel Lévinas’s philosophy of ethics as a methodology for interpretation. Traditional slave narratives like Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography and postmodern neo-slave narratives like Toni Morrison’s Beloved animate the violence endemic to slavery and colonialism in an effort to emphasize struggles in conscience, the incomprehensible atrocities, and strategies of rebellion. However, this project illustrates how The Book of Negroes supplements these literary goals with Hill’s own imagination of how slaves contested the inhumanities thrust upon them. Through his aesthetic choices as a realist, Hill foregrounds the possibilities of pacifism, singular identities, and altruistic agency through his protagonist Aminata Diallo. These three narrative elements constitute Lévinas’s ethical peace, which means displaying a profound sensitivity towards the historical Other whom imperial discourses and traditional representations of catastrophes in Black history might obscure. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ...................................................................................................... ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Dedication .......................................................................................................................... vi Introduction: Literary Ethics ................................................................................................1 Chapter One: The Memory of a Pacifist ............................................................................11 Chapter Two: The Paradox of Identity ..............................................................................37 Chapter Three: The Aesthetics of Altruism .......................................................................64 Conclusion: Further Possibilities .......................................................................................92 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................95 v Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to my wonderfully supportive supervisor, Dr. Lincoln Shlensky, whose keen eyes and incisive comments help established the parameters of my project, refine my emerging ideas, and flesh out the complexities of my argument. I heartily acknowledge Dr. Nicole Shukin for her nuanced criticism and guidance in my research of additional sources. I also send my thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Vibert for her enthusiasm about my analytical approach, Dr. Christoper Douglas for his input during the proposal phase, and my mentor, Dr. Asha Varadharajan at Queen’s University, who inspired my interest in postcolonial, diasporic, and Black literature to begin with. Additionally, I am appreciative for my colleagues and friends, especially Rebekah Ludolph, Vivian Binnema, and Illiana Diaz, whose patient ears and willingness to edit my long drafts relieved many worries. Lastly, I thank my family whose faraway encouragement was endlessly motivating. vi Dedication To my youngest brother and sister, Mark and Esther, whose curiosity about Black history is yet unsatisfied. Introduction: Literary Ethics A novel internationally acclaimed for its detailed rendition of the past, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes (2007) familiarizes its readers with the less explored facts, sites, and identities of the past as the novelist introduces his distinct concept of memory which he uses to interpret Black history.1 The narrative takes the form of a fictional autobiography that reconstructs eighteenth-century history through the memories of a fictional former slave named Aminata Diallo. She recounts her childhood in Africa; enslavement and later freedom in America; impoverishment in Eastern Canada; residency in the settler-colony Freetown in Sierra Leone; and participation with the abolitionists in London, England. The author researched extensively to write his nuanced work of fiction, declaring that “my responsibility to history is to project it honestly, meaning to project it in a way that’s faithful to my intellectual understanding of the time, places and conditions in which African people were living” (“Projecting History Honestly” 316). Hill reshapes history into fiction through a personal standard of responsibility to depict his subjects honestly. The notion of responsibility to others evokes the question of ethics that writers recapitulating violent histories encounter. Certainly, there are numerous strands of ethics, particularly normative ones about determining proper conduct in pragmatic situations (Perpich 4-5). While virtuous actions are relevant, they are the outcome of an individual’s ethical engagement. Emmanuel Lévinas’s philosophy deliberates on the elusive origins or foundation of ethics that 1 The Book of Negroes is also known as Someone Knows My Name in the United States because the publishers were concerned the term Negro, with its historically negative connotations, would be offensive to the American public (Hill, “Projecting History Honestly” 319). Also, I employ the term Black history to refer to the collective histories of slavery, colonialism in Africa, and other coexisting forms of racist exploitation (I allude to shared struggles rather than a fixed idea of black identity). 2 culminates in a profound responsibility to other human beings. Responsibility, according to Lévinas, is imposed on one before the self can even make a conscious decision about it, preceding any reflection on existence (that is, ontology) (“Diachrony and Representation” 111). Since one is always and already implicated in the world with other human beings, responsibility extends infinitely into the past towards the victim or, in a word, the Other. Though Lévinas is mainly concerned with responding to those living in the present, his ethics also gestures to historical casualties. Certainly, bygone tragedies cannot be undone or the dead revived, but responsibility enters into the challenge of preserving the complexities of the historical Other in representations upon which contemporary understandings are based. Furthermore, I contend that learning about the intricate mechanisms of political systems culpable in the long victimization of the underprivileged can reveal the aspects of these structures in need of reform. Lévinas’s philosophy contains both a macrocosmic and microcosmic scale of ethics because the face-to-face relationship with the Other bears universal implications, and this dual perspective is germane for delving into the individuality of historical figures while still critically evaluating the enterprise of the slave trade and the tradition of interpreting Black history itself. The irresolvable tensions and the instability inherent in Lévinas’s ethics that does not prescribe specific actions correspond to the unsettled issues and shifting views among historians, critics, and novelists about the representation of Black history. My master’s thesis proposes a theory of literature’s ethical potential through the example of The Book of Negroes. Hill’s fictional remembrance is unique because he does not primarily focus on the atrocities that Aminata survives or witnesses. I do not wish to 3 suggest that her story lacks scenes of slaves’ resistance or that the various descriptions of brutality in Hill’s novel do not jar the reader, but I argue that Hill rewrites the chaotic past “peacefully,” a term which I draw from Lévinas’s essay “Peace and Proximity” (1984). Lévinas’s idiosyncratic concept of peace does not mean an absence of conflict; rather, an ethical peace signifies the profound sensitivity to the victims whose humanity or complex identities might be obscured by the violence of historical disasters. To contextualize the essay historically, it was published near the end of the Cold War, which had the effect of propagating new states based on the oppressive politics of nationalism and socialism in Europe. Lévinas extends his critique of the late-twentieth century to a repudiation of the centuries-long system of European domination that the novel also illustrates in its depiction of slavery and exploitation governed by
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